Online Video Hub blip.tv Secures Second Round Of Funding

Web video may be struggling to prove its earnings potential, but that isn’t stopping the industry from chugging along and trying to win over viewers. Today blip.tv announced its second round of institutional investing, led by Bain Capital Ventures.

New York-based blip.tv is a video sharing service focused on original content. The company distributes over 37,000 actively updated Web shows and served more than 51 million video views in September, a 250 percent increase over September of last year.

Blip.tv has not disclosed the dollar amount of funding for this round or the company’s previous round of funding, but Blip’s CEO Mike Hudack says that the company was well on its way with gathering funding before the economy started to tumble.

"Now is the time to cautiously expand," he says. "We were very conservative during the boom times, and now we want to be conservative, but we see this as a great opportunity to grow."

Blip.tv plans to spend its new funds on expanding audience, distributing the company’s content wherever people are viewing videos and focusing on advertising and monetization.

Hudack says that Blip.tv is especially concerned with proving the measurability, ease of purchase and value of online video advertising.

"If the industry can transition from being an experimental buy to a proven buy, we will do well as brand dollars shift from less measurable media to more measurable buys."

The company joins other existing companies in Bain’s venture portfolio, including LinkedIn, Thumbplay, The Find, Tokbox and LaLa
Media.